120. Memorandum From Harold W. Glidden of the Division of Research and Analysis for Near East, South Asia, and Africa to the Director of Intelligence and Research (Cumming)0
SUBJECT
- Intelligence Indications of Coup in Iraq
No significant indication of the impending action in Iraq appeared in any sources available to DRN, despite the fact that a very close watch was being kept for precisely this development. Interestingly enough, informal contacts with individuals who have just returned, having left Iraq only a few days or hours before the coup confirm the impression that there was no outward sign that the eruption was imminent.
The following considerations have some bearing on this dearth of critical data:
- 1.
- The Iraqi political climate was frequently assessed, formally and informally, among the intelligence community. It was generally known for some years that the regime had little popular base: this is, however, characteristic of Arab governments. There was also general awareness that public resentment and tension had risen somewhat in the aftermath of a bitter and sustained propaganda campaign directed from the UAR capitals at Jordan, Iraq and the Arab Union. In view of the former government’s excellent security system and demonstrated capacity for containing such tensions, it was unanimously felt that these symptoms could be disregarded, unless some organized base developed in the armed forces, since there was no organized political vehicle of any importance. Such was indeed the case.
- 2.
- Circumstantial evidence now begins to appear that the lines of this plot were laid outside Iraq itself, among dissident expatriates in Cairo and Damascus. Movements of the more important expatriates were known routinely, but no particular significance attached to them, since their following within Iraq was small, unorganized and under continuous governmental surveillance.
- 3.
- For some time it has been evident that the drive for change by violent means in Middle Eastern countries was most likely to take effective form from intermediate officer grades in the armies. Especially since the Egyptian revolution, DRN has constantly directed the attention [Page 323] of all reporting agencies to the median officer group and the possibility of Egyptian manipulation of their known nationalist sentiments. This grade-range comprises several hundred officers; it is not surprising that contact could not be established with every one of them. The former Iraqi government maintained a very complete intelligence net within the Army itself which did not discern any questionable contacts on the part of Col. Qasim, even though the Iraqi government was itself aware (as were we) that Col. Qasim had been exposed to Syrian subversive efforts while stationed in Jordan in late 1956.
- 4.
- The type of operation (based on a round of assassinations) was one
requiring few participants and hence more easily concealed. The
essential problem was outlined in a memo from this office, May 5,
1958,1 specifying
requirements for the intelligence community in reporting on the
UAR, where it was anticipated
that such a plan might be generated:
“… policy and high-level decision making are concentrated in the hands of a very small circle … at best, important projected steps are known only to Nasir and a small group of intimates around him. Hence, unless they [are] divulged by some member of this coterie, or until they become apparent, we are not likely to have much advance notice of important planned actions. …In addition, this inner circle of government has surrounded itself by a tight security system”2
- 5.
- Several false indicators were apparently employed as a deliberate smokescreen. They were correctly assessed at the time as having little trouble-making potential, but their significance as a cover was not apparent until after the event. Iraqi security forces were also apparently deceived, believing that the plot would start with uprisings generated among certain minority groups in outlying areas.